Let's Lisp again
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Roll up! Roll up! For the 2007 International Lisp Conference
Lisp is one of the oldest and best-loved programming languages around,
but it gets relatively little attention from programmers despite its
flexibility and power. Now the organisers of the 2007 International
Lisp Conference hope to raise the language.s profile by inviting
entries for their latest programming contest.
It.s an idea they.ve tried before: a competition was run in the
lead-up to the New York lisp conference in 2003. Then the entrants had
to solve the "Last Piece Puzzle", a type of jigsaw with a few billion
billion frustrating possibilities but only five correct solutions.
This time around the problem is also topological, and involves writing
a program to play the game of .Continuo., a card game where players
place coloured cards on the table and score points. Each card has a 4
by 4 grid of coloured squares, and you score points by building
connected regions. It.s the sort of game mathematicians love to
inflict on their children and programmers love to write elegant
algorithms for just so they can make the kids cry by beating them
every time.
Prizes are on offer for the program that scores the highest, the one
using the most elegant algorithm and the fastest running
program. There.s even a prize for the first entry submitted that can
play the game .half decently. in the judges. opinion, and one for the
best use of really obscure lisp features.
Lisp programmers have until March 3 to enter, although if you.re
really keen you could emulate one of the 2003 winners who learned the
language from scratch just in order to take part. Prizes will be
handed out at the conference, which takes place in Cambridge from
April 1st to 4th Full details on the conference website at
http://www.international-lisp-conference.org/ Everyone who knows the
value of balanced parentheses will be there - shouldn't you?
About the Conference
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The 2007 International Lisp Conference will take place at Clare
College, Cambridge, England from 1-4 April, with an afternoon of
punting and walking around Cambridge on March 31 to get people into
the mood.
Alongside the usual conference fare of tutorials, invited speakers and
technical sessions there will also be workshops and demonstrations
covering all aspects of Lisp in use, and the conference will be
rounded off with a traditional high table dinner served in the
college's Great Hall.
Invited speakers include Richard Jones from the University of Kent,
John Mallery from the AI Lab at MIT and Ralf Moeller from Hamburg
University of Technology.
Full details on the registration site at
http://www.international-lisp-conference.org/.
Or you can get conference announcements from the ILC 2007 announce
mailing list at http://www.alu.org/mailman/listinfo/ilc-2007-announce.
By Bill Thompson